Ashes
by JestaAriadne
Summary: CATS fic. Grizabella reflects. Need I say angst?


Ashes  
By JestaAriadne July 2002

I don't own CATS or the character of Grizabella.   
A *very short* piece from Grizabella's PoV. My first fic as a 15-year-old (whoo). And it's angst, completely. Making a couple of the connections I've been thinking about for a while. These _aren't _all my own feelings, please note, but Grizabella's character always moves me.

It's pathetic, in the end. I can barely walk or think straight now. What do you do when you know you've reached the end of the road? Do you break down and cry, or laugh, or scream, despair, struggle, yell, die...?

_Or do you just..._

Is there something you should try at least once - before the end? Somewhere you should go? Somehow a last resort?

_Or do you just..._

Because I don't know what to do now. It's not as if I've been here before, however close I may have been.

_...go on living....?_

But it doesn't matter. All I can do now is collapse onto the pavement... and keep breathing

So maybe I should have learnt. Maybe I should be just a little more callous and cynical and used to the world I've been used by. I should know what I'm doing now, but I don't. It doesn't seem as if emotions could exist inside me. Reckless outsider. Uncaring outside. Decrepid and stoney-eyed in a shadowy coat of cinders, but my burnt-out heart still beats. Wounded inside.

Hopelessness doesn't change much.

I still hurt.

There are pigeons all around and above me, scuffling with each other for scraps. Pigeons... City birds with their feathers the colour of the ruthless pavement, the colour of ashes. Self-important scavengers, bustling about, haughty and lonesome in their flocks.

At least someone's making a living from this.

No one ever picks up each other's litter, do they? Here on the streets is where all the rubbish and the throwaways and the outcasts ­ are. We exist. We breathe. We eat when we can, we sleep where we can. We live, because we haven't got any choice.

And the city birds with their blackened feathers pick up at least some of the mess, and get fat and foul and bitter, struggling their sordid wings through the tarry skies. Birds against the sunset... Dark shapes winging their way upwards as the night falls. Upwards through the mockery of heaven to roost on the monstrous building we loathe and depend upon, and back to the streets by day and scrounging for food with their wings tucked back against their hapless bodies. It's some freedom.

I watch them and sigh mist into the atmosphere.

I never wished to fly. I never wished to escape because I never let myself be caged. I wanted to be happy. And I thought you had to chase happiness. Maybe you do. Maybe I could just never run fast enough.

* * * *

_Pussy cat, pussy cat...  
...where have you been?_

Have I not searched the world?

To think I began with such hope. I abandoned a safe life of my own free will. I'll admit it was a choice I made. A stupid choice, but nevertheless something liberating in itself. And I can can see it stil goes on. I'm not the only broken dreamer.

_You can see them now..._

Starry-eyed damsels lost among the crowd in wonder... Dreamers and dancers and players and chancers with their dreams like fires burning in them...

_You can see them now..._

...Throwing their fortune to the stars...

_You can see me....then..._

Such ideals and the wildfire that drives us to do stupid things... No one can see in the dark without the fire of their dreams.

And what's left by the morning?

Just the stifling smoke and half a memory. Only a grey shadow heavy and stubborn, and guilt ­

And ashes.

Just ashes.

My fur is the colour of ashes.

_I can see me now._

A damsel very much in distress but without a prayer for rescuer or a happy ending. Just waiting here on the pavement among the pigeons and the old papers for the train home, or a direct route to apocolypse. Either way.

And though it won't do any good, I can't help but wonder exactly where everything went wrong. Was it the dreams? Can you have _flawed _dreams? Hopes that were never whole or good enough in the first place? Is it my fault...?

_Pussy cat, pussy cat...  
...where have you been?_

I have been to heaven and back again. Far too far back the other way. Oh yes, it was heaven. For me, for a little while.

I wanted splendour and I found it. There's a harsh beauty about the city and it stunned me at first, just as I stunned them, and we revelled. You don't always notice the dangers and the trip wires down at your feet, not straight away, and especially not if your eyes are fixed up on the stars.

They don't care, you know. Those celestial gems aren't shining for me, or you, and they never were. Stars are only dead matter in the void of space. Where, they say, no one can hear you scream. It doesn't surprise me. Why would anyone bother to listen?

Maybe that's the one hard wisdom I've gained from this life.

No one cares.

But we all so naively stare upwards at the sky, and when the stars pierce through the cloud and the smog like poisoned candy floss, and twinkle so plaintively, mocking us with their immortality, all we can do is whisper some cliché to them - to _ourselves_ - and forget all that they are. Only a scientific complexity, vast imperfect spheres of gas. Only dead things, burning.

_Burning..._

If all the stars should be consumed by their raging fires, would I see the flames go out? If the heavens should rid themselves of the white-hot tricksters, would the sky by pure and rich and dark? If the dead light should crumble to dust, would the ashes rain down around us? Would we all learn? Would we all die?

Would I?

It may already be too late.

But I am not dead. I am burnt. I no longer sparkle and shine. I am burnt.

No longer a star. With a coat of ash and burnt-out soul, I remain on the pavement and wait only for apocolypse, and know that I am still alive.

I still hurt.

The End

A/N: mid-teen crisis? It's another vignette, and also my first piece I didn't drag to a comparatively happy ending!... Yes, it was meant to be a quickie ficcie... I really wanted to get something actually done, but an idea I've had for a while.  



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